Touring, grandly and with the top down.

If someone had told us 20 years ago that we would one day be chasing a hard-driven down a sinuous California mountain road in a convertible — and keeping up fine, with no particular stress or drama — we might have found that prediction hard to credit, or seen it as a dark omen of some future chaos or unforeseen social upheaval.

But there we were, six of us, whistling down a beautiful road north of Morro Bay, nose-to-tail in a muted flurry of high-performance engine growl, big downshifts (of both the automatic and manual type), flickering brake lights and the sound of broad tires scrubbing the dry pavement, with none of our cars losing ground on the others. The Porsche led, but the Cadillac followed effortlessly in second slot, the two drivers enjoying themselves only in small differences of degree, rather than worlds apart.

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Somehow, the convergence of famous family traits in those two cars — 's tradition of pure sport and performance mingled with the age-old Cadillac reputation for coddling the car's inhabitants — defined what this comparison test was all about. All six of these convertibles are, with varying degrees of emphasis, a mixture of sporting capability and luxury, with surprisingly little compromise on either front. They are fast, expensive, powerful and fine-handling convertibles that — unlike the fluttering ragtops of yesteryear — also provide the kind of civility and comfort that encourage you to travel long days and long distances. They are grand touring cars, with tops that go down.

Some grander than others, of course, and some markedly sportier. It was the search for that ideal balance point between driving excitement and quiet pleasure (not to say somnambulance) that led us over Interstates and busy two-lane highways into the serpentine wilds of the California Coastal Range for three days of driving, discussing and filling notebooks with colorful opinions and equally colorful rejoinders. Rating sheets were duly filled out, prices pondered, cars wrung out at the drag strip, skidpad and slalom course, and here are our conclusions:

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